Out of the Cold

It’s been a while since I’ve posted because I’ve been traveling to avoid our January in Upstate New York with not one, but TWO trips recently.

First up: we took a family trip to the Out of the Blue Festival at the Moon Palace resort in Cancun. This was Cute W’s idea after we saw Noah Kahan at SPAC in September. We loved that concert, and when we determined that the girls were also fans of Noah, we booked tickets to see him as well as Caamp, Mt. Joy, Lizzy McAlpine, Joy Oladokun, Briston Maroney, Samia, and others in a tropical locale.

Typically, our travel falls into two categories: visiting family (and this is the majority of our travel) and vacations that are jam-packed with activities, whether it’s being touristy or adventure-type outings. This was our first vacation for just the four of us that was basically all relaxation. Moon Palace is also an all-inclusive resort, which means that once we arrived, we didn’t have to spend any time thinking about and calculating the expenses of various choices. It also meant that we could get together for meals or eat on our own, sit out in the sun or take a nap in the room, squish up toward a stage or sit back in the sand, whatever we each felt like doing.

It was fantastic. There was tons of stuff to love: the music was awesome, the atmosphere was chill, tropical fruits abounded for my fruit-obsessed family, and the poolside taco buffet was <chef’s kiss>. There were things we didn’t love so much: the ocean itself was sea weedy, J couldn’t handle the heat of midday, and everyone was so helpful that we felt like were characters on White Lotus. We all decided that we were not exactly fancy-resort people, but the combination of the resort amenities and all of the music was so good we’d all love to do it again.

Basically, they offered two afternoon music sets on a stage set up right at the pool, and then in the evening, there was a concert with multiple acts at a beachside venue, followed by a late-night set starting at 11:30 pm.

Besides all the fantastic music, pretty much my favorite thing to do is to sit by the pool with a big ol’ book and a frozen drink, and there was plenty of time for that. I also got the chance to take in some nature as I lounged.

One might think that after studying hard all semester, the girls would want trashy novels, but nope. Their reading choices were so nerdy that I took a picture of them.

That’s J’s Dark Water: Voices From Within The Veil by W.E.B. DuBois, and M was alternating between The Undocumented Americans and Solito, Solita: Crossing Borders with Youth Refugees from Central America.

The food ranged from average to very good, and we particularly appreciated our lunch at the fancier Mexican restaurant, where we feasted on all sorts of things while a Mexican lady placidly prepared fresh corn tortillas.

Every time I turned around, J was either holding tropical fruits or had just left them with her other stuff. In addition to the restaurants and poolside tacos, we appreciated the many stands of snacks and treats in the concert venue — if I’m remembering correctly, this was a chicken tikka wrap, flanked by a margarita and a Coke Zero.

It was fun to transition to a more “grown-up” trip with our daughters, and while the resort looked like it had plenty of kid-friendly stuff happening, with a mini outdoor water park in one section, we appreciated the deep relaxation that can only happen when your kids are fully capable of finding their own room, ordering their own food and drinks, and getting changed all by themselves.